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DappledThings.org

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God and Comics

Michael Rennier

If you love God, and you love comics, the math adds up to you also loving God and Comics, a bi-monthly podcast of “super-soldier serum” dished out by three theologians who want nothing more than to nerd out with you for a bit.

I don’t want to get too theoretical with you and try to force you to admit that the Bayeux Tapestry is a great example of the art of comics (It is), or quote soul-searching words from comic writer Scott McCloud to you (“…when you look at a photo or realistic drawing of a face, you see it as the face of another . But when you enter the world of the cartoon , you see yourself.”), or argue that the way in which a comic strips down storytelling to its barest elements allows it to communicate in a unique way. Dappled Things readers are a pretty sophisticated bunch and I’m sure you’re all reading comics already, so all I want to do is introduce you all to a pretty cool podcast and talk comics with my friend Jonathan Mitchican, one of the aforementioned three priests. Full disclosure – Jonathan and I have been friends since meeting at Yale Divinity School in 2003, and he recently became Catholic because he wanted to copy me or some serious reason like that.

This part is about superman

First, tell us about your podcast and where you got the idea to put it together

I was an Episcopal priest for eleven years. It was during that time that I met Fr. Matt Stromberg and Fr. Kyle Tomlin. All three of us have loved comics since we were kids. The main reason I started the podcast was because I wanted to have regular conversations about this stuff. I kept seeing theological depth in comics and I wanted to have a place to have that discussion. Since I became Catholic, we have continued to do that. Now that the show is ecumenical, we have a great time bringing in different perspectives and even having respectful debates. It’s a lot of fun.

What is it about comics that appeals to you?

When I was a kid, it was the superhero genre. I loved seeing these figures who were bigger than life. The struggle between good and evil was very palpable to me in those stories. Interestingly enough, I could see the same thing in the priesthood and the way that faithful priests served Mass. There is a kind of heroism in liturgy that I don’t think has been fully explored by theologians.

As I’ve gotten older though, I’ve come to appreciate the whole breadth of what comics can communicate. The superhero genre is still a big deal but it is not the only one. There are comics that tell all kinds of stories: history, mystery, romance, westerns, horror, science fiction, you name it. No matter what kind of stories you enjoy, chances are there is a comic that is right for you. I have learned to appreciate the medium of comics more and more. Comics create unique visual worlds in which stories get to play out. I love being able to see how that works. When I read novels, I often have trouble picturing what is going on if there are too many descriptive details. In comics, the whole picture is shown to me. I am able to take in a comprehensive vision, which unexpectedly means that I can appreciate the language more. I feel more deeply connected to the writer’s words because I can see those words coming to life. There’s something profoundly biblical about that. The word that becomes the world, and the world that finds its true beauty in glorifying the word.

Did you have a favorite comic growing up, did you ever stop reading, and what do you read now?

I had a lot of favorites growing up. My comics that I could not miss were Batman, X-Men, and Daredevil. I was also a pretty big Iron Man fan. But my favorite two heroes were Green Lantern and Wonder Woman. They’re still my favorites. I have action figures of them that sit on my desk.

Yes, I stopped reading for a long time, from about mid high school until I was about thirty. I never lost my interest in the characters though. I would follow them through various iterations in film and cartoons. When I finally did come back, in part through my friendship with Fr. Kyle, I went back and read a whole lot of what I missed in the years in between.

These days I read a lot of trade paperbacks which are the graphic novel versions of ongoing comic book series. I read a lot of Marvel too because of their Marvel Unlimited service which allows you to read most of their back catalogue on your tablet. I am a big fan of writers like Brian Michael Bendis, Bryan Glass, and Gail Simone, as well as certain artists like Amanda Conner. My favorite comic in recent years is the Mice Templar series that Glass did. It is the most epic adventure story I have ever read, rivaling even the great stories epic adventures of modern literature like Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia. It involves a secret order of knights fighting for freedom against an oppressive regime of rats, a hero named Karic who may or may not be prophesied, and a tremendously rich tapestry of legends and rituals that Glass draws from Norse mythology and other sources. It is a bit violent in places, but it is an incredibly well written series.

How is that the visual language of comics (it’s more than pictures with words, it’s, uh, hypostatic) communicates in a way that the written word alone cannot?

Reading comics is in some ways more akin to watching a movie than to reading a novel, because you see everything that is happening. But it goes beyond that. Comics allow for a different kind of storytelling that stimulates different parts of the brain than you get with either regular literature or films. Thinking about a series like Mice Templar again, for instance, the medium of comics allows for that story to be told in a way that is as striking visually as it is through language. Michael Oeming, who was the artist that co-created the series with Glass, set up a visual template that makes the mice look serious, sympathetic, and real within their own space. I do not think you could re-produce that on a screen and have it be the same, even though I would love to see a screen adaptation. It would be easy to over-sentimentalize in a cartoon and over-the-top in CGI, while on the pages of a comic book it can be realistic and restrained, subtle even, while still delivering quite a punch. Another book that expresses what I mean, more in the superhero genre, would be the current run of Silver Surfer which is drawn by Mike Allred. It has this incredible pallet of colors that makes the whole universe of the surfer pop. It is quirky and even comical at times, but it still fits within its own dramatic milieu. You could certainly make a movie out of it, but it would not be able to communicate that same way of seeing the universe. It would not have the same naked exposure of the characters’ thoughts and feelings.

Comics are interesting to me because they’re “subtractive,” meaning the artist polishes, combines, edits until the storyboard is economical but still tells the story. Have you noticed that comics are capable of saying more about God and the human experience in a shorter space than other forms of communication? Do you find that there is any work being done in the space between the frames (and should we call it apophatic?)

I am not sure I know totally how to answer this [ed. Note, this is because I’m a horrible interviewer]–it is hard to speak about what happens in the negative space by definition–but I do think that scale of story-telling in comics gives it a different weight. Most comics have about twenty-two to twenty-four pages of story. You have to express a lot in that space. And even in much longer graphic novels, there is only so much room per page and per panel. There just is not room for a lot of dense overlay of exposition. Usually, in a serialized comic, it’s just one short page of “last time this happened” and then you’re thrown into the deep end of the pool. Yet even in such small space, with a lot of direct and pointed dialogue and a need for simplicity, really big, complicated ideas get explored. There is a tendency to get to the nub of things quickly. I think that makes it fertile ground for exploring the relationship between God and creation, even when it is done unintentionally. God is so complex and so simple all at the same time.

I guess what I’m getting at is, if the medium is the message, why does the world need the unique form of expression that is comics?

I do not know if the world needs comics but I think the world is richer and more beautiful for having them. And for people like me, who have trouble with the mental pictures, it gives us something tangible and beautiful to focus on as we take in stories. In that way, comics almost could be said to analogous to iconography, creating windows into the deeper truths of this magical world that we live in.

Are comics capable and willing to do heavy lifting theologically, or as you discuss them on your podcast are you approaching it more from the pop culture perspective?

We have always said that this show is first and foremost about comics and the stories they tell. We never try to impose theology on top or to exploit comics just as a way of getting to some doctrinal point. Yet we’ve found in almost three years of doing this now that theology almost always rises naturally to the surface. There have only been one or two shows where some sort of theology did not come up. I certainly think you could write a comic that would be more explicitly catechetical. Such things exist. There is, for instance, a comic version of St. Augustine’s City of God. But in general, I think the better thing for us to do as Christians is to look at what is out there with eyes of faith and see how the divine mystery unfolds there. Every great story, after all, is in some way an echo of the greatest story ever told.

Who is the most godless comic book character? Who is the holiest?

Perhaps the most godless would be someone like Jesse Custer from the Vertigo book “Preacher.” He is an explicitly anti-Christian figure and “Preacher” is written intentionally to create an a narrative to fill what the writer felt is broken in religion, much in the same way that Pullman wrote “His Dark Materials” as a kind of anti-Narnia.

Holiest is a harder question. Although there is a wonderful set of two comics from the early eighties that I have copies of, put out by Marvel, that depict the lives of Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa. It is hard to get much holier than that!

One candidate I would have to include though for holiness from the superhero genre would have to be Saint Walker who is part of the mythos of the Green Lantern stories. Saint Walker is an alien from a distant planet called Astonia and in many ways he’s a tragic figure. He loses his whole family during a quest for enlightenment. But he holds onto hope and never lets go of it. Eventually, he becomes the first Blue Lantern, having a ring that gains its power from his hope. He’s able with his ring not only to fight his own battles but to give a boost of extra power to any Green Lantern in his vicinity, adding his hope to their will power in order to create a greater force for good. It’s not a Christian story by any stretch, but Saint Walker represents a kind of virtue that is sometimes forgotten in the darker heroes that are often depicted in our era.

Are there any particular writers who seem to be delving more deeply into the human experience and asking harder questions?

So many! I have already named a bunch of them like Bendis, Glass, and Simone. I would add to that list Geoff Johns, Brian K. Vaughan, and Kelly Sue DeConnick. Most of these folks aren’t Catholic or Christian of any kind, but they are wrestling pretty hard with what it means to be human, how we are to treat one another, and what life and death are ultimately all about. Also, Gene Luen Yang should be on any Catholic’s list. He is Catholic and he writes in a dizzying number of genres. As a Chinese American, he has a unique voice and perspective in modern comics.

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Filed Under: Deep Down Things

Michael Rennier

About Michael Rennier

The Rev. Michael Rennier lives in St. Louis with his wife and children. He has an MDiv from Yale Divinity School and is a Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of St. Louis. He is also a regular contributor at Aleteia.

Comments

  1. AvatarStephen says

    November 16, 2017 at 11:00 am

    My job in education requires me at times to deal with scrupulous parents who I have to calm down when a book I’ve assigned has the word “damn” in it, so I do not want to sprinkle any fundamentalist rain on any worthy type of literature. I do have a sincere question, though, for comic book fans, which regards their thoughts on comic books’ highly-charged erotic depictions of women.

    Just in talking to guy friends, comic books were for some of us the first powerful hit of lust cocaine, where we encountered anatomically overdeveloped, clothing-deficient women. I’ve heard from an old-timer who said that a skimpily-clothed Flash Gordon villainess from way back when was the beginning of what became sex addiction for him.

    Now hormonal boys are going to make first contact with sex anyway. Lust will find a way, and if it weren’t in comics, it would have been the lingerie section of the Sears catalog. I guess my personal concern, and why I would steer a son of mine away from comic books entirely, would be that it’s not just a tendency but a rule, with few exceptions, that superheroines are depicted in extremely erotic ways in that genre. Wonder Woman I’m sure has inspired some high-minded, respectful thoughts for women in some men, but for those of us who weren’t able to view her depictions in the comics as a bosomy model in a revealing outfit with the same dispassion, I don’t think it was because we were bringing dirty minds to an innocent depiction. Particularly after watching a mini-documentary on Wonder Woman, about her roots in S&M culture and her creator’s bald admissions of his aims of injecting sex into his work, and that paving the way for other artists and fans–in the face of good old Evangelical Christian reaction–to develop a “we’re for healthy, frank sexuality” stance, it’s hard not to feel a problem at the heart of the art form.

    I want to feel a balance on the issue. I love stand-up comedy and the fact that it’s the rule, not the exception, that it runs into foulness is something you understand and navigate when appreciating the art form. My heightened problems with comics books in particular are 1. at best, they are a form that I think need to be taken from kids and appreciated by adults only, and 2. even in an that context, the erotic depiction of women seems like a core, inescapable principle of the art form and difficult to reconcile with the Catholic worldview. I would be very open to the other side of the argument — I’ve just never heard what it is.

    • Michael RennierMichael Rennier says

      November 16, 2017 at 2:08 pm

      Stephen,
      While I sympathize with your concerns and share some of them, I disagree with the conclusions you draw at the end of your comment, specifically, ” the erotic depiction of women seems like a core, inescapable principle of the art form.”

      I’m sure there are thousands of examples of comics that would disprove that point.

    • AvatarJonathan Mitchican says

      November 16, 2017 at 2:33 pm

      I can understand your frustration and your nervousness about the way that comics have at times over-sexualized the female body. This is a pervasive problem in popular culture of all sorts. There have been times when I have avoided certain comics because of the way they do this. It is a criticism that is shared by many readers and many creators.

      I would just note a few things as you think about your own interaction with comics and that of your children:

      1) Comics are a medium, like film or television or painting or literature. There is nothing inherent in that medium that makes over-sexualized depictions necessary. It is and has been a common feature of superhero comics, but there are many comics that are not superhero comics.

      2) Even within the genre of superhero comics, there are some great comics that do not over-sexualize. Take for instance a book like Captain Marvel which has a female protagonist. She is not drawn to be sexy. She is drawn to look strong and powerful, as befits her character. Many of the biggest stories are also doing this more and more. A lot depends on who the artist is on a particular book and what period of time you are dipping into it, but comics are far more sensitive about this stuff today than they ever have been in the past.

      3) Most comics books are written by people who are not practicing Christians. This is also true in the vast majority of other pop culture outlets today, like film and television. So any way you slice it, you are going to come up against things that challenge or even contradict a Catholic worldview. That makes for hard parenting choices. Do we shield our children from everything that exists in the pop culture realm? We can try, but they will confront these things eventually. While I would not want to expose my child to images that could harm him, I do think there is merit in learning how to separate the good and the bad in what’s out there. This is one of the reasons why we do what we do at God and Comics, to find what is good and true and beautiful in the art form of comic book storytelling even when the creators themselves might not be fully aware of it.

      4) Most comic books are for adults. The vast majority are written with an adult audience in mind, including superhero books. I would not let my children look at most superhero comics, if for no other reason than because of the level of violence. But having said that, there are some great comic books out there that are written specifically for kids. DC has a junior line of superhero books. And there are lot of great graphic novels for kids. I highly recommend one called “Cleopatra in Space.”

      5) We need more Catholics creating comics books! It would be so much better for the medium if more people were telling stories who have a Catholic worldview.

      6) Many of the superhero characters we know and love have been around for a very long time. Wonder Woman in particular is celebrating her 75th birthday this year. They have changed and evolved quite a bit over time. Yes, there was a sexualization in Marston’s original depiction of Wonder Woman that I find uncomfortable. (I actually wrote about that a couple of years ago here: https://livingchurch.org/covenant/2014/12/19/wonder-woman-and-the-power-of-truth/ ) There have been many ways of showing Wonder Woman though and many different approaches to her character. I have always found her to be a heroic figure, not a sexual one. She is in many ways one of the most virtuous characters in comics.

      7) That said, if you find certain kinds of images to be triggering or you just don’t want to have to hassle with having to separate the wheat from the chaff, I can understand that. Skip the superhero books entirely then. Stick to stuff like the Mice Templar. But don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. There is so much there worth exploring.

  2. AvatarStephen says

    November 17, 2017 at 1:03 pm

    Jonathan, I really appreciate your response. This is the type of thoughtful, reasoned explanation I’d always hoped to hear from a Catholic comic book fan. It’s educating to hear about a new sensitivity to oversexualized drawings in the comic book industry and what sounds like maturity overall in the story-telling.

    Your Wonder Woman article was also excellent, demonstrating how art can come to transcend even its creator’s original intentions. I saw “Justice League” last night and WW did stand out as the noblest and most grounded of the characters (poor Batman has become the most immoral of the hero squad in Affleck’s iteration). That article also added context to a question I’ve raised with some friends about the effect of the new flood of female protagonists on young boys. There was a clear divide when I was growing up between He-Man for boys and She-Ra for girls. Now a young boy is just as likely to play with all-female Ghostbuster toys, Wonder Woman, or the two female protagonists of the last two Star Wars offerings. In my childhood, as Seinfeld says, the male superheroes were not fantasies, “they were options.” You were choosing the man you wanted to project yourself into in the world of play, and for me that could be Batman or Donatello. I don’t know what it would be like to have projected myself into a female toy as a kid. As your article reminds us, that would have led to suggestions you were gay, but now boys have a culture of encouragement to choose those toys. I have no opinion on that; I just have raised the question what difference that might make for the new generation of boys. It sounds like you already went through that, though, as you say in your article “identify”ing with Wonder Woman as a kid, and it sounds like everything worked out, so that’s good to know.

Mary, Queen of Angels 2020

Purchase Featuring nonfiction from Joshua Hren, fiction from Jennifer Marie Donahue and Rob Davidson and the winners and honorees of the Bakhita Prize in Visual Arts.

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